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This reminds me of an account I heard on NPR's "Planet Money" about the other side of the coin. The Barilla pasta company opened a new factory in southern Italy, which apparently has a substantially different business culture than northern Italy where the company is based. The southern factory had a 10% absenteeism rate which could not be reduced by firing people since the country has a generous sick-leave policy-- I can't recall whether the country required notes or the company did, but in any case that wasn't a deterrent, as there were willing doctors.

Barilla made two moves to fix it: they collected information on the doctors who were sending the notes, and discovered which doctors were excusing high numbers of their employees, and let them know that they'd be showing that information to the medical authorities if that didn't change. They also dispatched a doctor to the employee's house to see if they were indeed home sick.

Then they showed the employees the numbers, and said that this factory has higher absenteeism than their factories in the north, and if that didn't end, they'd close this factory and open one elsewhere. Before long, the employees were turning in the shirkers.

I did; my point is that even if you were taking the very reasonable course of firing employees who were abusing sick-leave to shirk their shifts, plenty of people wouldn't see it that way, and only see that you were firing people for calling in sick. It mostly comes down to who gets to tell their side of things first.

They don't expect high quality workers; they expect to be able to fire the ones that fall short of a minimal standard and only the strong will survive. There's nothing confusing about that. High turnover of young people with no work ethic is the intended labor model.

Years ago, I saw a sailboat get stuck off Bill Point, on the opposite side of the harbor mouth, once. The keel stuck into the sand, so instead of heeling over as the tide went out, the sailboat just lifted straight up out of the water, as a temporary monument to that sailor's stupidity.

My bet is that the 20% price bump is going to hurt their sales because people can't resist judging value by the sticker price. I wonder if they'd do better to just add a compulsory 20% gratuity to all tables regardless of party size. Might make for an interesting experiment, as long as they have the old menus around.

Meh. KUOW has a $1.8 million dollar endowment, if that's what you mean by "millions in the bank," but endowment money can't be touched, and that's pretty small beer considering they have a station budget of about $13 million.

They do have millions in cash at any given moment, but that's what happens when you raise your $7 million in listener donations primarily in 2 different weeks of the year.

I do find it interesting that their program fees, paid to APM, PRI, NPR, and so on, only run about $1.5 million. Yeah, they could probably get a few new shows. But then Bill Radke would go back to mornings, and I'll do anything to stop that, because that's the time I listen.

1> you have to estimate your taxes, which isn't a huge deal, and
2> if you do owe them money, the interest you owe starts accruing on April 16th, even if you don't file for months to come.

TurboTax is a great way to go. You can do it online through them (get ready for a lot of upselling; many people can get away with paying them nothing, and most other individuals need only do the $30 option, plus whatever state tax filing costs-- Federal is free) or buy the software.

Go ahead and buy the software if you feel you can afford it. Go through it once right away to learn what you need and may not have-- find your W2s, 1099s, etc. After your shit's together (well, your tax shit), resume and complete your filing. The whole system is like a long and helpful questionnaire. Easier than pie, because I've done my taxes a lot with TurboTax and TurboTax.com, but I've never made a good pie crust.

I know you're accustomed to thinking of the USA as a single country, but, well, that's like thinking of the EU as a single country. The States of the US have a lot of legislative power and a lot of widely varying laws. For the most part, employment law falls to the states, so it's mostly meaningless to say that the US doesn't have a national standard-- even if every state guaranteed 30 days of vacation, it wouldn't be a federal law. Thus, we have 50 sets of employment laws, 51 counting Washington DC.

The federal government's employment laws mainly exist to guarantee the rights of workers and businesses, prevent discrimination, etc. Vacation days is a kind of detail that would be gross overstepping by the Federal government, and a serious intrusion into the rights of states to make themselves as friendly or unfriendly to business as they please.